ANGLICAN RECORDS AND CHURCH HISTORIES

"The oldest church in the county is the 'Old Neck' Methodist Church, twenty-three miles below Marion,
built in 1735 by the first settlers of that region, as an Episcopal Church, or the Church of England
[Anglican]. It was used as an Episcopal Church until some time after the Revolutionary War, when by
some arrangement agreed upon, it was used by both the Episcopalians and Methodists together..."

THE FREE WILL BAPTIST CHURCH can be traced back to the early
seventeenth century in England, and a bit later to the American colonies when
an entire church, consisting of pastor and congregation,
came from Wales and settled on the Delaware River on what was known as the Welsh Tract.
From this group came several men who preached the Arminian doctrine in contrast
to the prevailing Calvinistic doctrine of the day. One of these men, Paul Palmer,
is credited with organizing the first Free Will Baptist church in 1727 in Perquimans
County, NC. Palmer had previously ministered in New Jersey and Maryland, having been baptized
in the congregation which moved from Wales.

The movement in the northeast was instituted under the leadership of
Benjamin Randall, who organized the first Free Will Baptist Church
in New Durham, New Hampshire, June 30, 1780. The General Conference of Free Will Baptists
was organized in 1827.

METHODIST RECORDS AND CHURCH HISTORIES

(Old) Ebenezer Methodist ChurchNorthwest Marion County, near Dillon Co. line
Historical Notes
from the journal of L. F. Jernigan, written c. 1940, and contributed by
Frank Jernigan, son of the author.
1986 Birthday Celebration
from Friends of Ebenezer leaflet
Cemetery

"The records of the South Carolina Conference of
the United Methodist Church are housed in the Archives. These
records, which date from 1785, include the minutes of the
sessions of the Annual Conference as well as the conference
newspaper, the Southern Christian Advocate. The Methodist
Collection also has an index of the obituaries appearing in the Advocate
from 1837 to the present.

The Methodist Collection is the official repository for the
records of Conference agencies and holds the records of a number
of South Carolina Methodist churches, an index of appointments
to churches in the conference from 1785 to 1954, and published
histories of the conference and a number of churches."
Source: Wofford College

Please note that some obituaries from the Southern Christian Advocate newspaper are/were searchable
on the Wofford library site:
http://www.sandorteszlerlibrary.org/archive/Obits/search.htm

As of August 2000, surnames beginning A through F had been extracted and placed in
their database. On a recent visit to the web site (27 June 2001), however, the search function was not working.

The Circuit Riders of the Methodist Church in Early America

John Wesley's Methodist plan of multiple meeting places called "circuits" required a
force of preachers willing to travel to, or make a circuit of, the congregations in their charge.
A circuit was made up of two or more local churches (sometimes referred to as societies) in early Methodism.
A pastor would be appointed to the charge, or circuit, by his bishop. During the course of a year the minister
was expected to visit each church on the charge at least once, and possibly start some new ones.
At the end of a year the pastors met with the bishop at annual conference, where they would often be
appointed to new charges. A charge containing only one church was called a station. The traveling preachers
responsible for caring for these societies, or local churches and stations, became known as circuit riders,
or sometimes saddlebag preachers. They traveled light, carrying their belongings and books in their saddlebags.
Ranging far and wide through villages and wilderness, they preached daily or more often at any site available
be it a log cabin, the local court house, a meeting house, or an outdoor forest setting. Unlike the pastors of
settled denominations, these early Methodist preachers were constantly on the move. Their assignment was often so
large it might take them 5 or 6 weeks to cover their circuit. Francis Asbury (1745 - 1816), the founding bishop
of American Methodism, is said to have traveled 270,000 miles and preached 16,000 sermons as he traveled the circuits.

Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) described the life of the circuit rider in his Autobiography:
"A Methodist preacher, when he felt that God had called him to preach, instead of hunting up a college
or Biblical Institute, hunted up a hardy pony, and some traveling apparatus, and with his library always
at hand, namely, a Bible, Hymn book, and Discipline, he started, and with a text that never wore out nor
grew stale, he cried, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.' In this way he went
through storms of wind, hail, snow, and rain; climbed hills and mountains, traversed valleys, plunged through
swamps, swollen streams, lay out all night, wet, weary, and hungry, held his horse by the bridle all night, or
tied him to a limb, slept with his saddle blanket for a bed, his saddle-bags for a pillow. Often he slept in
dirty cabins, ate roasting ears for bread, drank butter-milk for coffee; took deer or bear meat, or wild turkey,
for breakfast, dinner, and supper. This was old-fashioned Methodist preacher fare and fortune."

PRESBYTERIAN RECORDS AND CHURCH HISTORIES

Marion Presbyterian Church

Some Presbyterian church records for congregations of Southern states are archived at the regional office of the Presbyterian Historical
Society in Montreat, N.C.

Bibliography

The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason,
Anglican Itinerant ed. Richard J. Hooker
(Chapel Hill; Univ. of N.C. 1953)

Marion churches and churchmen, 1735-1935 : a narrative of the Church of England and its successor,
the Episcopal Church Stanley, Victor Bland, Jr
(Charleston, S.C. : Southern Print. & Pub., c1938 )
Copy available through LDS